I have so much faith in the death process as a means of confronting all life experiences and actions that I rarely think beyond it. Except for in communication with those who’ve passed. I hope to meet death (in the very far distance) full of openness and not expectations but I would benefit from softening into trusting it. Thank you for the invitation
Learning about Rat park changed my life many years ago. I absolutely love the orientation of this piece and your use of it. Its profound
To die in life is to let go, but what are we really letting go of. My theory: We're surrendering a chain that binds us. However it is important that the intensity of any situation requires a natural, not forced, release of energetic respect and love. This will free and motivate us way beyond any separations=bindings. So in a sense the part of us that was in chains dies.
This needs to be applied anytime hurtful or negative feelings toward anyone or thing comes up, even judging ourselves, we need forgiveness and not criticism. the inner being of others is one with ours.
once our inner visions see beyond the personality= the ego we begin to open expand our own limitations and capacity for humility, respect, and love
To 1st become conscious of any preconceptions or impressions is half the battle.
Sometimes something in us has to die, but it’s not the body and it’s not the soul. It’s the ego. The part that clings, defends, performs, resists. When that starts to fall apart, it can feel like breaking, but it’s actually the beginning of becoming clean.
We carry weight. Grudges, false pride, stories we’ve told ourselves just to survive. Sometimes we carry them so long they feel like part of us. Letting them go isn’t easy. But when it happens, something lifts. You feel space where there was once only tension.
There’s a verse that says whoever turns away from the truth carries a burden on the Day of Resurrection. Not just symbolically. A real weight. A chain built choice by choice. And when we forgive, or face what we once ran from, a link breaks. The load lightens.
What you said about seeing beyond ego, beyond personality, cuts straight through. That shift is everything. Once you start seeing the part of another that isn’t tangled in performance, you begin to see your own limits more clearly. And you begin to move past them.
There’s a practice that Muslims have forgotten today. It was one of the core ethics of the early generations. During one of the battles, a man spat at a companion of the Prophet, and the companion stepped back and let him go. He said, "Now if I strike you, it will be because of anger, not for the sake of truth."
That isn’t softness. That is strength returning to its source. Thank you for going there. Most people never even try.
Yes, I really feel that too. For me it feels like strings instead of chains. I surrender the ego string that connects with self-centeredness and control but then when that surrenders I am more aware of the other strings to follow into integration and love. So the liberation feels held within a greater architecture. It’s what helps me against bypass which I need because i have certainly explored bypassing a lot. Very imperfect human over here! Haha Anyway, the bypass feels like opening into bliss into complete openness unattached from responsibility or guilt. Maybe even like Nirvana. But for me it’s a trick because the embodied peace, the one which literally helps attune my senses, is always held within relationship.
The bypass has always met me very sharply with pain and negative circumstance. Some people would call me unlucky with the bad fortune leading to things like whole body infection (septic shock), anaphylaxis, poison ivy requiring hospitalization, “unexplained”unconsciousness seizure, and the list goes on, but it has always happened as a means of redirection. I’ve learned to tell the hospital staff “I promise, i’m ok. I don’t need further check up”. Whenever I do there’s always nothing wrong. (Except the extreme allergy to fish) haha
Thats just to say, that I listen closely because when I don’t, it is always a literal pain
Letting go and of course, yogic/ meditative masters thru the ages have called this non-attachment. Of course there is only attachment to life in the sense of the physical sensual world, senses. Death is likely the ream of the unseen, the spirit,sole, or ? Of course being of flesh and life I can only speculate. However, how many times in life can we let go, forgo pleasures of the flesh. And who is to say that this process greatly differs from physical death?
There is a quiet power in how you speak of letting go. Many meditative traditions have spoken of non-attachment as a virtue, and there is truth in that. But I often pause at the way detachment is framed, because sometimes it begins to sound weightless. If suffering is just a shadow to transcend, or if death is only a doorway into another cycle, then where does responsibility actually rest?
The yogic or karmic view speaks of return. Do wrong, and you may face the result later. Not now. Not even in this life. And possibly not in a form you will remember. But that raises something difficult. If accountability is endlessly delayed, is it really accountability?
If someone harms another today, then comes back centuries later in a different body with no memory of the act, how does justice occur? Who answers for what happened? Where does the victim go to seek truth or repair? How does healing even begin when the one who acted, the one who suffered, and the one who pays are not the same?
That feels less like justice and more like evaporation.
In our tradition, the soul is one. The test is one. There are no replays, no recycling of selves. You are remembered, fully. Every act is written, every injustice is weighed, and every soul meets what it sent ahead. The Qur'an puts it plainly: "Whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it, and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it." There is no dilution. No forgetting.
Death, then, is not a reset. It is the unveiling. The mirror that tells no lies. The Prophet said, "Frequently remember the destroyer of pleasures." Not to sink us into fear, but to lift us into awareness. In another narration, he said, "No one remembers death often without it showing in their actions." That is where it lands. Not in abstract ideas, but in how we speak, how we give, how we live.
Letting go has its place. But so does holding on. We let go of illusions, yes. But we hold on to what is just. To what matters. To the quiet knowledge that we will be asked, not randomly, but precisely. The aim is not detachment without roots, but sincerity without excuses.
I am still learning this. Still fumbling toward it. But your words gave it shape again. Thank you.
I find so much benefit and resonance in yogic meditation and philosophy but only when I have a structure to place it within. I love the body process of yoga for becoming raw enough to connect with god. The idea and reality that it takes effort and process to reach a state wide enough to seek from feels very real for me too.
I also see karma as a spiritual bypass and process of individualism. Although so much of the west does this and I live in the west so I assume that’s where it comes from and that the true practicers are deeply connecting through it.
I am partial to the idea of many lives but not in a passive sense. I wonder if the death process is too great and a soul gets lost into so much darkness that even the structure of hell doesn’t uplift, if they return to life again for “training” and engaging in relationship again. It’s never felt real that a person’s soul could be lost forever. Even the person who has hurt me the most, I seek peace for. They have a mom and every mother loves their child and seeks reunion.
Just listen to these once. Not to analyze, not to worry about translation. Just let the sound and rhythm pass through you like wind or water. Simply as an experience.
I say this because you mentioned yogic practices, and the way certain sounds or vibrations can open space for reflection. I thought this might be something you could listen to in that same spirit. Not for agreement, not as instruction, but as presence.
The first one is from Surah Al-Mu’min "The Believer", verses 38 to 46. It is a short passage, just a few minutes, but powerful. A man speaks truth in Pharaoh’s court, with clarity and sorrow. He is not angry, but sincere. He urges those around him to remember what came before and to think about what lies ahead.
The second is from Surah Maryam, the chapter of Mary. This one is longer, about nine minutes. The English translation appears on screen line by line with the Arabic. It flows gently, like a river. It carries grief, beauty, reunion, and quiet strength.
No pressure to respond. Just an offering, from one seeker to another. If something stirs in you, I would love to hear what it was. And if not, that is completely fine too. This conversation already means more to me than I can say.
No one has ever said words truer than what you just said. There is something in your words, that gentle trust in death as a confrontation and a companion, that echoes one of the most grounding teachings I've come across. Our beloved Prophet once said, "Frequently remember the destroyer of pleasures: death." It sounds stark at first, but it's not a threat rather a return. A way to sharpen our vision. To remember what matters, and loosen the grip of everything that doesn't. Meeting death not with expectation, but with openness, is exactly that orientation. I want to ask, from a place of real respect, how you enter that state. Not the theory, but the experience. The practices, the rhythms, the quiet agreements you've made with yourself. I'm not asking for any reason other than this: to improve myself. To soften where I've become rigid. To remember more clearly, and to live more honestly.
There's a layer to that Rat Park idea that the lab could never test. The spiritual dimension. The self that reflects and recalibrates. The part of us that watches the watcher. That inner space is where real freedom lives, and where I think healing truly begins. In our tradition, those who came before us used the remembrance of death not as a morbid weight, but as a tool of liberation. Prophet said, "Remember death often. It refines the soul, detaches you from the illusions of this world, and turns your heart toward what is lasting." And another saying goes, "No one remembers death often without it showing in their actions." and whoever remembers death often, achieves contentment.
In that sense, death becomes a kind of mirror. A calibration tool. Not to shrink from life, but to meet it with depth. With sincerity. With less fear and more intention. And our beloved Prophet also warned: "Hasten to do good before you are overtaken by one of seven things: poverty that distracts, wealth that makes you arrogant, illness that drains you, old age that confuses you, death that arrives suddenly, the rise of deceivers, or the final moment of reckoning." I share all this not to teach, but to open a door. You clearly already walk with a kind of awareness most people only read about. If you're ever willing to share how you live with that awareness, how you remember without being overwhelmed, I would love to learn.
Thank you also for sharing your the words from the prophet. I relate to every line. Death shatters the illusions and tests the deepest form of ethic. Our time in the world brings the connections death asks us to remember. The more we create good the more it is within us.
It is powerful to read.
** also I forgot to mention that in the waking state I find music, dancing, swimming, hugging, celebration to all evoke the deep wisdom of deep rest and death-process. The vibration and elevation supports me so much. I spend a lot of time celebrating life with my kids and husband and it’s good for all of us. The more flow and vibrancy in the social relaxation, the more I can focus and work and the deeper I sleep. It also confronts the rigidity within me and allows me to relax and move within the warm loving environment. It’s good to lean into and gives a lot of connection to the creative and beautiful depth of the pre-form world. Also on a slightly morbid note but I don’t write with heaviness.. if you don’t know if you’re alive or exist and find a beat and realize you can move to it, that is a beautiful entrance to being
Thank you endlessly for making this space for me to share. It is the first in my life and it means more than I can say. I am sure my words will be clumsy. My relationship to this space isn’t through words so it feels challenging (in a helpful way for my self-process) to articulate through it.
I view death-process as an honor and truly the most profound experience. So much so that I think the relationship ought to be birthed from deep respect, even challenging ourselves as what “respect” means. So I approach it humbly as if building a relationship with something on an entirely different level than myself. So big that, again, I try to stretch my brain as to what “big” means from an experiential sense. My biggest life moments, the ones that collapse me entirely in love or fear, the ones that are so scary that panic sets in, the scariest monsters I can imagine and the most beautiful divinity… that weight is small in comparison.
But that weight is still so meaningful and in that way, by design/structure, it is also the real first bridge to death-process. It’s as if it is the sight, from miles away, as we just begin to approach and see the mountain. And it is the weaving of these life weights that we journey through to create an ultimate story that speaks about us, who we are. Not just the choices but the why. The why to our blindnesses. But there is still so much of us left alive that we can embrace or reject. But our openness or lack of sets the tone. Just like in life, there is space to spiral into darkness. So hopefully we practiced kindness and humility among other things to carry us through the beauty and pain of acceptance.
But that is just the shiny exterior. Imagine if death were a being with unimaginable complexity and all we did to acknowledge it was to comment on the color of its shiny exterior. It’s a disrespect. But at the same time, we dont want to erase the profound of the exterior.
So with all of this, I remind myself to embrace who I am and learn about myself as I try to live ethically. To experience my struggles fully and my ability. To practice asking for help. To practice offering help. To be engaged in this type of large scale self-process openly and with love.
I honestly don’t think about this part too much. Not that its trivial, but just that usually the weight of choices on this level are well within normal awareness and that means we can act on them in life. Most people, I hope, act on these without hesitation. We reconcile, apologize, meet the calls for growth, share love, are faithful, etc. Of course, we are human so, when mistakes happen we need to re-engage on the path and forgive. It’s not so big. We are human. But also it’s not small. It’s bigger than anything we know. I try to hold this light hearted care with myself.
But, like I said, that is approaching the death-process before even really meeting it. But it sets the tone, it engages the pathways, shines the light as we begin to interact with death. But the paths that illuminate, the following the light as we approach deeper… that is on a different level.
It’s not an exaggeration to say we are always universes away from the deeper death process when alive. So it is this monumental thing which we can barely sense or feel. But it is so important, we really need to try. I have found the closest we can get is through deep rest at night, likely with the tides of the CSF when interstitial space expands.
Of course trying to “grab” this space would be futile and even disrespectful. Part of what makes the space sacred is that there is no “I” or control within it. So, what we can do is recognize its wisdom and support that with our daily actions.
In deep rest we integrate, repair, synthesize, heal. But how?
I don’t have the answer except to say that we are closest to the deepest organizing forces that hold this wisdom of what goes where, how meaning forms, and who we are meant to be. I have some modeling around this which connects the earth systems, our ancestry, culture and the divine. The point is that the integration of wisdom across all time and space seems to occur to help us, as a species, family, individual, orient our developmental trajectory.
There is profound wisdom in this space but it is pre-form — so it is unruly, chaotic, unpredictable. The way we engage our relationships in life holds a compass for us here. Not for narrative sake. Not for ourselves. Truly to honor relationship, itself, as an essential pillar of existence.
To approach it, I require myself to drop my self-benefit. Perhaps it benefits me but even if it doesn’t, I seek honor and truth in my relations as respect for life. I serve them because they are worthy. Period.
I spend the most energy here. I try to condition my senses and heart to see truth — to be able to really relate and be with all of waking reality. To do my job as a human. We all know there is so much work to be done, it’s not hard to find purpose. But I remind myself that “I am not the space of deep rest and integration. It is my job to show up and effort as ethically as I know how. The results, the reorganization of tissue and people, the control, is for a much greater power”.
A practice I have is “noticing the small nuances of perception upon waking and really letting the weight of the day go into my body and not my mind”. I have so much more to say but this is already crazy long.
I suppose with all of this practice and the depth of death-process and the mystery and purpose within it, I don’t have much attention for what’s after.
It’s honestly astonishing to me how closely what you’re describing mirrors what we were taught and raised with in Islam. The depth you’re sensing, the surrender, the ungraspable wisdom, the pre-form space, these aren’t just metaphorical for us. They’re woven into our daily rhythm with clarity and intention.
Before sleep, we recite a short prayer:
"Allāhumma bismika amūtu wa aḥyā"
O Allah, in Your name I die and I live.
Because the Prophet ﷺ said that each night, Allah takes our souls. Those for whom death is written, He keeps. And the others, He returns, just until their appointed time. Sleep is not just rest. It is a minor death. A handing over. A rehearsal for the return.
And when we wake, we say:
"Al-ḥamdu lillāh alladhī aḥyānā baʿda mā amātanā wa ilayhi an-nushūr"
All praise is due to Allah, who gave us life after having taken it, and to Him is the final return.
Your language of rest, and the tides that move us through the unseen, felt so familiar... but from a different lens. It’s not a space we enter by our will, but one we are brought into, and brought out of, each time with mercy. You speak of letting go of control, and in our way, we don’t just let go, we entrust.
There’s something else we’re taught, which came to mind as you described releasing weight before rest. Before sleep, we’re encouraged to imagine that this may be our last night. Not to frighten ourselves, but to clear the heart. To let go of grudges. To forgive those who hurt us. To ask forgiveness from the One we return to. It’s not morbid. It’s intimate. A way of returning each night with a clean ledger, with no poison left in the soul. A soul ready to meet its Maker in peace.
And at the end of all things, the Qur’an gives us this vision. The one who lived with sincerity and trust is welcomed with these words:
O tranquil soul, return to your Lord, pleased and pleasing. Enter among My servants. Enter My Garden. (Qur’an 89:27–30)
That, for us, is the deepest hope not just to die, but to return. And to be received.
PS: My intent here isn’t to convince you of the worldview I hold, but simply to share the resonances I saw, the places where your words touched something deeply familiar. Thank you for trusting enough to share this. It means more than I can say.
“That, for us, is the deepest hope not just to die, but to return. And to be received.”- for reasons unknown to me, I cannot separate the death process from the return. They seem completely interwoven. To embrace life in all its beauty and informed by death is to find the path to return. Anything else feels dishonest.
It’s so wild you mention engaging the “each night as if the last” practice. In 2018, I think, that process overcame me. I thought it might be true but learned to lean into it for awhile so it was distressing. But I embraced it and showed me so much. It lasted for a year without my choice and I still engage in it.
Yes, the resonance is remarkable. I am grateful for it and still don’t know exactly what to make of it. I trust it will become clear in time but I do sense that learning more about Islam is the direction to turn to right now.
Connection and disconnection addiction and non addicted. The balance to strive for: seen and unseen /spirit and flesh
I have so much faith in the death process as a means of confronting all life experiences and actions that I rarely think beyond it. Except for in communication with those who’ve passed. I hope to meet death (in the very far distance) full of openness and not expectations but I would benefit from softening into trusting it. Thank you for the invitation
Learning about Rat park changed my life many years ago. I absolutely love the orientation of this piece and your use of it. Its profound
To die in life is to let go, but what are we really letting go of. My theory: We're surrendering a chain that binds us. However it is important that the intensity of any situation requires a natural, not forced, release of energetic respect and love. This will free and motivate us way beyond any separations=bindings. So in a sense the part of us that was in chains dies.
This needs to be applied anytime hurtful or negative feelings toward anyone or thing comes up, even judging ourselves, we need forgiveness and not criticism. the inner being of others is one with ours.
once our inner visions see beyond the personality= the ego we begin to open expand our own limitations and capacity for humility, respect, and love
To 1st become conscious of any preconceptions or impressions is half the battle.
Sometimes something in us has to die, but it’s not the body and it’s not the soul. It’s the ego. The part that clings, defends, performs, resists. When that starts to fall apart, it can feel like breaking, but it’s actually the beginning of becoming clean.
We carry weight. Grudges, false pride, stories we’ve told ourselves just to survive. Sometimes we carry them so long they feel like part of us. Letting them go isn’t easy. But when it happens, something lifts. You feel space where there was once only tension.
There’s a verse that says whoever turns away from the truth carries a burden on the Day of Resurrection. Not just symbolically. A real weight. A chain built choice by choice. And when we forgive, or face what we once ran from, a link breaks. The load lightens.
What you said about seeing beyond ego, beyond personality, cuts straight through. That shift is everything. Once you start seeing the part of another that isn’t tangled in performance, you begin to see your own limits more clearly. And you begin to move past them.
There’s a practice that Muslims have forgotten today. It was one of the core ethics of the early generations. During one of the battles, a man spat at a companion of the Prophet, and the companion stepped back and let him go. He said, "Now if I strike you, it will be because of anger, not for the sake of truth."
That isn’t softness. That is strength returning to its source. Thank you for going there. Most people never even try.
Yes, I really feel that too. For me it feels like strings instead of chains. I surrender the ego string that connects with self-centeredness and control but then when that surrenders I am more aware of the other strings to follow into integration and love. So the liberation feels held within a greater architecture. It’s what helps me against bypass which I need because i have certainly explored bypassing a lot. Very imperfect human over here! Haha Anyway, the bypass feels like opening into bliss into complete openness unattached from responsibility or guilt. Maybe even like Nirvana. But for me it’s a trick because the embodied peace, the one which literally helps attune my senses, is always held within relationship.
The bypass has always met me very sharply with pain and negative circumstance. Some people would call me unlucky with the bad fortune leading to things like whole body infection (septic shock), anaphylaxis, poison ivy requiring hospitalization, “unexplained”unconsciousness seizure, and the list goes on, but it has always happened as a means of redirection. I’ve learned to tell the hospital staff “I promise, i’m ok. I don’t need further check up”. Whenever I do there’s always nothing wrong. (Except the extreme allergy to fish) haha
Thats just to say, that I listen closely because when I don’t, it is always a literal pain
wow ... this needs a much deeper understanding, something I will ask you again.
Letting go and of course, yogic/ meditative masters thru the ages have called this non-attachment. Of course there is only attachment to life in the sense of the physical sensual world, senses. Death is likely the ream of the unseen, the spirit,sole, or ? Of course being of flesh and life I can only speculate. However, how many times in life can we let go, forgo pleasures of the flesh. And who is to say that this process greatly differs from physical death?
Thank you, Cliff.
There is a quiet power in how you speak of letting go. Many meditative traditions have spoken of non-attachment as a virtue, and there is truth in that. But I often pause at the way detachment is framed, because sometimes it begins to sound weightless. If suffering is just a shadow to transcend, or if death is only a doorway into another cycle, then where does responsibility actually rest?
The yogic or karmic view speaks of return. Do wrong, and you may face the result later. Not now. Not even in this life. And possibly not in a form you will remember. But that raises something difficult. If accountability is endlessly delayed, is it really accountability?
If someone harms another today, then comes back centuries later in a different body with no memory of the act, how does justice occur? Who answers for what happened? Where does the victim go to seek truth or repair? How does healing even begin when the one who acted, the one who suffered, and the one who pays are not the same?
That feels less like justice and more like evaporation.
In our tradition, the soul is one. The test is one. There are no replays, no recycling of selves. You are remembered, fully. Every act is written, every injustice is weighed, and every soul meets what it sent ahead. The Qur'an puts it plainly: "Whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it, and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it." There is no dilution. No forgetting.
Death, then, is not a reset. It is the unveiling. The mirror that tells no lies. The Prophet said, "Frequently remember the destroyer of pleasures." Not to sink us into fear, but to lift us into awareness. In another narration, he said, "No one remembers death often without it showing in their actions." That is where it lands. Not in abstract ideas, but in how we speak, how we give, how we live.
Letting go has its place. But so does holding on. We let go of illusions, yes. But we hold on to what is just. To what matters. To the quiet knowledge that we will be asked, not randomly, but precisely. The aim is not detachment without roots, but sincerity without excuses.
I am still learning this. Still fumbling toward it. But your words gave it shape again. Thank you.
I find so much benefit and resonance in yogic meditation and philosophy but only when I have a structure to place it within. I love the body process of yoga for becoming raw enough to connect with god. The idea and reality that it takes effort and process to reach a state wide enough to seek from feels very real for me too.
I also see karma as a spiritual bypass and process of individualism. Although so much of the west does this and I live in the west so I assume that’s where it comes from and that the true practicers are deeply connecting through it.
I am partial to the idea of many lives but not in a passive sense. I wonder if the death process is too great and a soul gets lost into so much darkness that even the structure of hell doesn’t uplift, if they return to life again for “training” and engaging in relationship again. It’s never felt real that a person’s soul could be lost forever. Even the person who has hurt me the most, I seek peace for. They have a mom and every mother loves their child and seeks reunion.
Amy,
Just listen to these once. Not to analyze, not to worry about translation. Just let the sound and rhythm pass through you like wind or water. Simply as an experience.
I say this because you mentioned yogic practices, and the way certain sounds or vibrations can open space for reflection. I thought this might be something you could listen to in that same spirit. Not for agreement, not as instruction, but as presence.
The first one is from Surah Al-Mu’min "The Believer", verses 38 to 46. It is a short passage, just a few minutes, but powerful. A man speaks truth in Pharaoh’s court, with clarity and sorrow. He is not angry, but sincere. He urges those around him to remember what came before and to think about what lies ahead.
(link: https://youtu.be/HBeIL7ppChg?si=NWm7yqYj3mveULkQ ) If you want to see the verses: go to https://quran.com/40
The second is from Surah Maryam, the chapter of Mary. This one is longer, about nine minutes. The English translation appears on screen line by line with the Arabic. It flows gently, like a river. It carries grief, beauty, reunion, and quiet strength.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CVJ-tIbvZo&ab_channel=AbdurRahman
No pressure to respond. Just an offering, from one seeker to another. If something stirs in you, I would love to hear what it was. And if not, that is completely fine too. This conversation already means more to me than I can say.
I will. Thank you 🙏🏻
No one has ever said words truer than what you just said. There is something in your words, that gentle trust in death as a confrontation and a companion, that echoes one of the most grounding teachings I've come across. Our beloved Prophet once said, "Frequently remember the destroyer of pleasures: death." It sounds stark at first, but it's not a threat rather a return. A way to sharpen our vision. To remember what matters, and loosen the grip of everything that doesn't. Meeting death not with expectation, but with openness, is exactly that orientation. I want to ask, from a place of real respect, how you enter that state. Not the theory, but the experience. The practices, the rhythms, the quiet agreements you've made with yourself. I'm not asking for any reason other than this: to improve myself. To soften where I've become rigid. To remember more clearly, and to live more honestly.
There's a layer to that Rat Park idea that the lab could never test. The spiritual dimension. The self that reflects and recalibrates. The part of us that watches the watcher. That inner space is where real freedom lives, and where I think healing truly begins. In our tradition, those who came before us used the remembrance of death not as a morbid weight, but as a tool of liberation. Prophet said, "Remember death often. It refines the soul, detaches you from the illusions of this world, and turns your heart toward what is lasting." And another saying goes, "No one remembers death often without it showing in their actions." and whoever remembers death often, achieves contentment.
In that sense, death becomes a kind of mirror. A calibration tool. Not to shrink from life, but to meet it with depth. With sincerity. With less fear and more intention. And our beloved Prophet also warned: "Hasten to do good before you are overtaken by one of seven things: poverty that distracts, wealth that makes you arrogant, illness that drains you, old age that confuses you, death that arrives suddenly, the rise of deceivers, or the final moment of reckoning." I share all this not to teach, but to open a door. You clearly already walk with a kind of awareness most people only read about. If you're ever willing to share how you live with that awareness, how you remember without being overwhelmed, I would love to learn.
Not to speak about it. Just to become better.
Thank you also for sharing your the words from the prophet. I relate to every line. Death shatters the illusions and tests the deepest form of ethic. Our time in the world brings the connections death asks us to remember. The more we create good the more it is within us.
It is powerful to read.
** also I forgot to mention that in the waking state I find music, dancing, swimming, hugging, celebration to all evoke the deep wisdom of deep rest and death-process. The vibration and elevation supports me so much. I spend a lot of time celebrating life with my kids and husband and it’s good for all of us. The more flow and vibrancy in the social relaxation, the more I can focus and work and the deeper I sleep. It also confronts the rigidity within me and allows me to relax and move within the warm loving environment. It’s good to lean into and gives a lot of connection to the creative and beautiful depth of the pre-form world. Also on a slightly morbid note but I don’t write with heaviness.. if you don’t know if you’re alive or exist and find a beat and realize you can move to it, that is a beautiful entrance to being
Thank you endlessly for making this space for me to share. It is the first in my life and it means more than I can say. I am sure my words will be clumsy. My relationship to this space isn’t through words so it feels challenging (in a helpful way for my self-process) to articulate through it.
I view death-process as an honor and truly the most profound experience. So much so that I think the relationship ought to be birthed from deep respect, even challenging ourselves as what “respect” means. So I approach it humbly as if building a relationship with something on an entirely different level than myself. So big that, again, I try to stretch my brain as to what “big” means from an experiential sense. My biggest life moments, the ones that collapse me entirely in love or fear, the ones that are so scary that panic sets in, the scariest monsters I can imagine and the most beautiful divinity… that weight is small in comparison.
But that weight is still so meaningful and in that way, by design/structure, it is also the real first bridge to death-process. It’s as if it is the sight, from miles away, as we just begin to approach and see the mountain. And it is the weaving of these life weights that we journey through to create an ultimate story that speaks about us, who we are. Not just the choices but the why. The why to our blindnesses. But there is still so much of us left alive that we can embrace or reject. But our openness or lack of sets the tone. Just like in life, there is space to spiral into darkness. So hopefully we practiced kindness and humility among other things to carry us through the beauty and pain of acceptance.
But that is just the shiny exterior. Imagine if death were a being with unimaginable complexity and all we did to acknowledge it was to comment on the color of its shiny exterior. It’s a disrespect. But at the same time, we dont want to erase the profound of the exterior.
So with all of this, I remind myself to embrace who I am and learn about myself as I try to live ethically. To experience my struggles fully and my ability. To practice asking for help. To practice offering help. To be engaged in this type of large scale self-process openly and with love.
I honestly don’t think about this part too much. Not that its trivial, but just that usually the weight of choices on this level are well within normal awareness and that means we can act on them in life. Most people, I hope, act on these without hesitation. We reconcile, apologize, meet the calls for growth, share love, are faithful, etc. Of course, we are human so, when mistakes happen we need to re-engage on the path and forgive. It’s not so big. We are human. But also it’s not small. It’s bigger than anything we know. I try to hold this light hearted care with myself.
But, like I said, that is approaching the death-process before even really meeting it. But it sets the tone, it engages the pathways, shines the light as we begin to interact with death. But the paths that illuminate, the following the light as we approach deeper… that is on a different level.
It’s not an exaggeration to say we are always universes away from the deeper death process when alive. So it is this monumental thing which we can barely sense or feel. But it is so important, we really need to try. I have found the closest we can get is through deep rest at night, likely with the tides of the CSF when interstitial space expands.
Of course trying to “grab” this space would be futile and even disrespectful. Part of what makes the space sacred is that there is no “I” or control within it. So, what we can do is recognize its wisdom and support that with our daily actions.
In deep rest we integrate, repair, synthesize, heal. But how?
I don’t have the answer except to say that we are closest to the deepest organizing forces that hold this wisdom of what goes where, how meaning forms, and who we are meant to be. I have some modeling around this which connects the earth systems, our ancestry, culture and the divine. The point is that the integration of wisdom across all time and space seems to occur to help us, as a species, family, individual, orient our developmental trajectory.
There is profound wisdom in this space but it is pre-form — so it is unruly, chaotic, unpredictable. The way we engage our relationships in life holds a compass for us here. Not for narrative sake. Not for ourselves. Truly to honor relationship, itself, as an essential pillar of existence.
To approach it, I require myself to drop my self-benefit. Perhaps it benefits me but even if it doesn’t, I seek honor and truth in my relations as respect for life. I serve them because they are worthy. Period.
I spend the most energy here. I try to condition my senses and heart to see truth — to be able to really relate and be with all of waking reality. To do my job as a human. We all know there is so much work to be done, it’s not hard to find purpose. But I remind myself that “I am not the space of deep rest and integration. It is my job to show up and effort as ethically as I know how. The results, the reorganization of tissue and people, the control, is for a much greater power”.
A practice I have is “noticing the small nuances of perception upon waking and really letting the weight of the day go into my body and not my mind”. I have so much more to say but this is already crazy long.
I suppose with all of this practice and the depth of death-process and the mystery and purpose within it, I don’t have much attention for what’s after.
Amy,
It’s honestly astonishing to me how closely what you’re describing mirrors what we were taught and raised with in Islam. The depth you’re sensing, the surrender, the ungraspable wisdom, the pre-form space, these aren’t just metaphorical for us. They’re woven into our daily rhythm with clarity and intention.
Before sleep, we recite a short prayer:
"Allāhumma bismika amūtu wa aḥyā"
O Allah, in Your name I die and I live.
Because the Prophet ﷺ said that each night, Allah takes our souls. Those for whom death is written, He keeps. And the others, He returns, just until their appointed time. Sleep is not just rest. It is a minor death. A handing over. A rehearsal for the return.
And when we wake, we say:
"Al-ḥamdu lillāh alladhī aḥyānā baʿda mā amātanā wa ilayhi an-nushūr"
All praise is due to Allah, who gave us life after having taken it, and to Him is the final return.
Your language of rest, and the tides that move us through the unseen, felt so familiar... but from a different lens. It’s not a space we enter by our will, but one we are brought into, and brought out of, each time with mercy. You speak of letting go of control, and in our way, we don’t just let go, we entrust.
There’s something else we’re taught, which came to mind as you described releasing weight before rest. Before sleep, we’re encouraged to imagine that this may be our last night. Not to frighten ourselves, but to clear the heart. To let go of grudges. To forgive those who hurt us. To ask forgiveness from the One we return to. It’s not morbid. It’s intimate. A way of returning each night with a clean ledger, with no poison left in the soul. A soul ready to meet its Maker in peace.
And at the end of all things, the Qur’an gives us this vision. The one who lived with sincerity and trust is welcomed with these words:
"Yā ayyatuhā an-nafsu al-muṭmaʾinnah. Irjiʿī ilā rabbiki rāḍiyatan marḍiyyah. Fa-dkhulī fī ʿibādī. Wa-dkhulī jannatī."
O tranquil soul, return to your Lord, pleased and pleasing. Enter among My servants. Enter My Garden. (Qur’an 89:27–30)
That, for us, is the deepest hope not just to die, but to return. And to be received.
PS: My intent here isn’t to convince you of the worldview I hold, but simply to share the resonances I saw, the places where your words touched something deeply familiar. Thank you for trusting enough to share this. It means more than I can say.
Thank you. 🙏🏻
“That, for us, is the deepest hope not just to die, but to return. And to be received.”- for reasons unknown to me, I cannot separate the death process from the return. They seem completely interwoven. To embrace life in all its beauty and informed by death is to find the path to return. Anything else feels dishonest.
It’s so wild you mention engaging the “each night as if the last” practice. In 2018, I think, that process overcame me. I thought it might be true but learned to lean into it for awhile so it was distressing. But I embraced it and showed me so much. It lasted for a year without my choice and I still engage in it.
Yes, the resonance is remarkable. I am grateful for it and still don’t know exactly what to make of it. I trust it will become clear in time but I do sense that learning more about Islam is the direction to turn to right now.